


The Richest Men In Town

by copperbadge



Series: Christmas Stories [9]
Category: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Philanthropy, Redemption, making amends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-24 23:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17110298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: George Bailey, a year after meeting the angel Clarence (second-class), gets a message from Clarence via an unlikely third party: H.F. Potter.





	The Richest Men In Town

**Author's Note:**

> My mother will [never stop being mad](http://copperbadge.tumblr.com/post/181282949726/copperbadge-not-to-say-mum-has-abandoned-her) that Mr. Potter stole the eight grand and never had to give it back. She thought Potter should have been made to return it, possibly via a reformation a la A Christmas Carol. So since she wasn't going to write it, I did.

There was one night in Bedford Falls, not too long after the war ended, one Christmas night when everyone prayed for George Bailey. Not all of them prayed in the same way or to the same deity, and not all of them would have called it praying, or been recognized as having done so. But they all did it. 

Bailey Park was full of Catholics and Jews, immigrants and refugees, people nobody else wanted to lend money to or sell land and houses to, and all of them knew George. Two of the men in the Atheist Debating Society had houses in Bailey Park and two more had paid for their houses in Bedford Falls with money from Bailey B&L, and if they didn't call it praying about him they sure called it worrying about him. The Spiritualism society had been _founded_ in Bailey Park. And roughly three quarters of the mostly-Protestant Bedford Falls either owed George a favor or had in the past. 

But this isn't about that night. 

This is about a night a little over a year later, when George Bailey caught up with Henry Potter. If anyone had ever prayed for H.F. Potter in his miserable life, it was mostly to pray that he left them alone until after payday, or didn't raise fares on the bus lines so much this year. 

Potter had been poorly the previous year, a winter pneumonia at the very start of January keeping him from the worst of his meddling in town finance and politics until well into April. By then the Building and Loan had recovered from the blow on Christmas Eve, when the eight grand went missing right before the bank examiner showed up. 

Sam Wainwright had guaranteed the B&L, but after the town's fundraising they only had to pay Sam back about two thousand and that interest free. And the postwar boom, combined with the plastics factory's expansion and several plastic-using manufacturers moving to the outskirts of Bedford Falls, meant the B&L was back on solid ground by the time Potter showed his face outdoors again in May. He was as sour as ever, but he was thinner and greyer, and some of the energetic malevolence had faded. Rents raised in September like they always did, but not by as much, and the rent collector sometimes looked the other way if you couldn't pay up. Not often, but sometimes. 

Then, on December 26th, a year after George Bailey nearly died in a river for the second time, a single printed page was sent to every shack, fleabag, wreck, and flophouse Potter held as a landlord. Every cold-water studio and railroad apartment room got a copy, every falling-down house in Potter's Field got it, and it was nailed to the front door of every building too, just in case.

_Merry Christmas from Potter Property Management Inc._

_In the spirit of the season all January rents on Potter Property Management buildings and units are remitted. The board of PPM Inc. will be meeting in the first two weeks of the new year to examine property values and readjust rent accordingly. You will receive notification of rent reduction or potential building improvements the third week in January._

_Please be prepared, as necessary, to temporarily relocate to the Frenmore Hotel, Main Street, Bedford Falls, on February 1, if it is determined that your current housing is not up to code. Your stay at the Frenmore will be paid by PPM Inc. and rent will not come due until you are relocated to a permanent residence._

Pretty much everyone thought it was some screwball, maybe a protest-prank by another fair-housing activist from the city who would get run out of town by Pinkertons that Potter kept on retainer. But on the 27th, the rent collector showed up. He went from door to door, but he didn't have his safe box with him, and it took him a long time at each door. By the end of the afternoon he was sweating and exhausted, and one Italian family who had every reason to hate the little man still reasoned to themselves that Jesus dined with tax collectors and fallen women. They invited him in, gave him dinner, and let him rest his feet.

After all, everyone he spoke to saw him as the bearer, just this once, of good news: the rent remission was real. There were already building appraisers preparing to come inspect the properties, and they should be ready with a list of every broken window, shoddy fuse, dripping pipe, draft, squeaky floor, broken stove, and vermin infestation in their unit. 

The 27th was also the day the bus line announced that as of January first, fares would be reduced and children under the age of 14 or, if they were still in school, under the age of 16, would receive monthly free ride passes. On the 28th, the department stores in town (owned by Potter) announced they suddenly had stocking and shipping-room positions open, unemployed veterans preferred. That same day, Bedford Falls Hospital, which had been fighting off takeovers by Potter for years, found his choke-hold suddenly loosened, and an anonymous gift of forty thousand dollars was presented to them to endow a free clinic. The donor wasn't known, but the man who brought the check was Potter's personal assistant, and he looked like he was dying inside as he passed it over. (Shortly thereafter he was given a pension and a cheerful, sturdy matron with eight children was hired in his place.) 

On the 29th, the First Incorporated Bank of Bedford Falls board of directors held a long morning meeting, and most of the board members resigned. Which was fine; on the afternoon of the 29th, the bank sent a press release to the newspaper that the First Incorporated would be converting to this new device, a "credit union", and that interest rates on all bank-held loans would be re-examined by an outside agency and possibly adjusted downwards. 

George Bailey, who had been on a modest vacation in New York with his wife while his mother minded the children, returned to Bedford Falls just before New Year's and on the afternoon of the 31st he was having a lunch-counter sandwich in town when he heard all the news. When the soda jerk got to the part about the credit union, he set down his sandwich. 

"Maybe he's dying," he said, and only George Bailey could look sad about H.F. Potter dying. 

"We can hope," the soda jerk said, and George scowled. 

"Why, that's a terrible thing to hope for," he said. "You hope for a nice pair of shoes for Christmas or good weather for fishing. Good things." 

The soda jerk made a face, but George let it go. He felt like he glowed these days, like the gratitude for his life now could never fade. To the rest of the town he had always been larger than life, a head taller than most physically and with a warmth that seemed to expand to touch everyone in any room he walked into. But now it felt like he _knew_ that, in a way he hadn't before. Folks used to ask him about Christmas night, of course, what had happened, but he just said, "Well, I took a long walk," until they stopped asking. 

"Anyway, you ever seen old Potter smile?" he asked.

"Once or twice," George said. Mean, acquisitive smiles. 

"Well, that's more than I have." 

George finished his sandwich in deep thought, and then resolved to go over and see Potter for himself. After all, the bank did have a relationship to the Building and Loan, a series of networks and paperwork exchanges, and he ought to know what was happening. 

But he had business to see to at the B&L after his holiday, and it was closing time before he thought of it again. He thought he'd stroll past the bank, just to see, and as luck would have it he didn't even get that far. He was passing Martini's new place, a big Italian joint in the center of town, when he heard "George Bailey! Hey, George Bailey!" and Nick ran out of the restaurant. 

"Hi there, Nick! How's business?" he asked. 

"Good! Come on, come in here," Nick said, tugging on his sleeve.

"Sure, but I can't stay long, I have to stop by the bank and Mary's -- " George began to protest, as Nick dragged him into the warmth of Martini's. 

"One of our guests wants to see you," Nick said, leading him over to a table by one of the high windows, and George stared in shock at H.F. Potter, who thought garlic was _dangerously ethnic_ , sitting in front of a massive plate of Martini's finest garlic-mussel pasta.

"George, hello," he said, face splitting in a smile, the realest smile George Bailey had ever seen on him. "Come over, sit down. Thank you, son," he added to Nick, who nodded and backed away respectfully. 

"Well, now, I was on my way to see you," George said, all but dumbstruck. 

"Please, sit, sit," Potter gestured at the chair across from him. "I'll bet you were. I'll bet you were. Tell me what you've heard."

George sat, opening his mouth and closing it. "Is it true the bank is converting?"

"Yes, it is. You know, I should have listened to your father decades ago. He might never have made a dime but by my soul he knew how to build a legacy," Potter said.

"Yeah, he...he did..." George murmured. "And the bus lines?" 

"The bus wh...oh! Yes, that too, fares really were unnecessarily high." Potter blotted his mouth with his napkin. "Will you have some steak, or some of these mussels?"

"Mary's waitin' dinner on me at home," George said absently. 

"How is she? How are the little ones? You have four, don't you?" 

"They're fine, my mother spoiled them while we were gone..."

"Well, that's what grandparents are for, I suppose," Potter said, and a week ago it would have sounded unctious, like trickery. Now he seemed just eager to make conversation. He fixed George with shrewd eyes, as if he could tell what he was thinking. 

"We should discuss the bank," George tried desperately.

"And we will, my boy, we will. Not today, however." Potter ate a forkful of pasta, sipping some wine. "I have something more important to tell you."

George braced. Here it came -- the poison behind the sugar. The motive for all of this generosity.

"What's that?" he asked. 

"I met an old friend of yours on Christmas eve. He said to tell you hello, and that he'd got his wings." 

George felt his jaw drop. "Clarence?" he asked. Potter nodded, eyes bright. "You met Clarence?"

"We spent a very...well, to be honest, an extremely _trying_ evening together," Potter said. "But I won't deny he offered me some insight into my business dealings I hadn't considered." 

"What'd he do to you?" George asked. He knew it was unkind but, as grateful as he was to Clarence, the process hadn't exactly been pleasant. 

There was a silence between them for a moment, and then Potter cleared his throat. "Do you know, if I had never been born, every single person I've ever met would have been just a little bit better for it? And if I had died on Christmas night, there would have been nothing of my passing but a stone in the cemetery. I changed nothing in the world I didn't change for the worse."

"I wouldn't think you'd care, to be honest," George said, horrified at himself even as he said it.

"I didn't, at first. But I'm going to die, and probably soon, and when I die nothing I swindled or stole or even earned in this life will amount to that," Potter said, snapping his fingers. "All I did was ruin peoples' lives for my own selfish greed, and what will that get me when I'm gone? Not a damn thing, George." 

George nodded. "So what will you do now?"

"Now? Well, I'll finish this excellent meal, and then go home. And tomorrow I'll get up and think up some new way to make Bedford Falls just a little bit better. All of my cronies, you know, they think I've lost my mind, that I'm just a doddering old man who's finally gone demented, but I'll show 'em. It's not as though they can stop me now I've begun." 

George steepled his fingers on the table. "Would you like a suggestion, Mr. Potter?"

"If it's to tell me to go to hell, I'm still hearing that a lot," Potter said, but he looked almost pleased. 

"Not at all. But if you'd like to lose ten or twenty thousand dollars in a hurry, the Bedford Falls grammar school is in a state, and you've got the deed on a piece of land that could use a school being built on it." 

Potter's eyes lit up. "I know the very one you mean!" 

"If you were to donate the land -- "

"I'll do better than that. I'll build the school myself. You'll speak to the school board for me, won't you?" 

"Sure, if you like." 

"Well, that's fine then, George, that's fine," Potter said. "I'll come to the Building and Loan in the new year and we'll strike a deal. And that reminds me, I’ll have an envelope and an apology for you. That’s for another time. Now, go on, go on home to your wife and kids. Good to see you."

"My pleasure, Mr. Potter," George said, and offered his hand to shake. He'd only shaken hands with Potter once before, as a much younger man, and then it had felt like a brush with the devil; now it was just the warm, dry palm of an old man. 

George stood, putting his hat back on. "Very nice to see you again, Mr. Potter."

"Merry Christmas, George."

George grinned. "And a happy new year."

"HA!" Potter croaked, and then burst into laughter, rusty but full. "A new year! Yes indeed! A happy new year!" 

***

It was just starting to snow as George stepped out onto the main street of Bedford Falls, and by the time he arrived home the kids were building forts and stockpiles of snowballs in the yard. Mary stood in the door, the waft of hot air from inside carrying the smell of dinner down to him.

"You're home a little late," she said, as he kissed her hello. "How was your first day back?"

"Pretty good," he said. "Pretty good. I ran into Potter on the way home -- "

"And the day was still pretty good?" she asked sardonically.

"You'll never guess," he said. "I'll tell you all about it over dinner."


End file.
